There's been a slew of articles all over the interwebs all about the Royal Caribbean and Dreamworks alliance and it seems everyone has an opinion on it.  MSNBC posted an article about the fight for families cruise lines are now engaging in with Royal Caribbean and Dreamworks, Norwegian Cruise Line and Nickelodean and Disney all vying for families to choose their ships.  The premise is that these alliances are hoping the kids will influence their parents to choose a cruise line, an idea we first posted about last week.

Anyone who doesn't think that the Royal Caribbean deal is about competing with Disney has their head in the sand.  Is Royal Caribbean looking to go head-to-head with Disney in terms of characters? Maybe not.  But what Royal Caribbean is trying to do is not cede the entire family cruise with young children demographic to Disney.  An under reported benefit of the Dreamworks deal is that Royal Caribbean also gets the rights to show the Dreamworks film library on board its ships.  That's a big bonus for kids who will be able to watch Shrek or Kung Fu Panda ad nauseum in their staterooms.

I know there's a lot of backlash from cruisers who are concerned their next cruise will be filled with character based entertainment that will ruin their cruise.  If you consider what Disney does on their ships the crux of character integration on a cruise ship, on Disney ships, you really have to go out of your way to see a character, much less interact with one.  You can be in the pool, or on the sun deck or at dinner and never see one.  The character entertainment on Disney is very compartmentalized and I imagine Royal Caribbean will have a similar model as well. 

How much of an impact this alliance will have remains to be seen but this deal shouldn't be vilified or feared.  Rather, it looks to be (on paper) a good deal for both sides and hopefully something that will fatten Royal Caribbean's bottom line, which in turn helps us all.

It's become a tradition before your cruise to get that packet of cruise documents in the mail that you will need for embarkation onto the ship.  It's a traditional part of the cruise planning process that's about to change completely.  Back in March 2010, Royal Caribbean announced they were doing away with the paper based cruise documents in favor of an e-ticket, that they've called "eDoc".

Royal Caribbean Director of Sales and Marketing Services Angela Stephen describes the eDoc as a "customized mini-website, pre-cruise planner, get-excited-about-your-cruise, and brag-to-your-friends-and-family-what-an-incredible-vacation-you-are-about-to-take” type of document.   The eDoc is basically a better means of marketing all that Royal Caribbean offers (read: activities that cost extra) to the cruiser who may not have been aware of it.  Given that the majority of cruises never visit cruise planning sites like this or Cruise Critic, they are unaware of many aspects of cruising until they got on board the ship.  The eDoc seems to be an attempt to educate guests about what is available on the ship before they board the ship so that they can book ahead of time.

Click here to preview what a sample eDoc looks like

For those that miss the old paper documents, you can order them for $35 per person, although Stephen mentions only 5% prefer the printed version (more like only 5% are willing to shell out the money for it, as opposed to expressing an opinion on the matter).  

What do you think of the eDoc idea?  Do you like it? Do you prefer the old way?  Share your thoughts!

Last month, Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein announced that Royal Caribbean was pulling Mariner of the Seas from it's Los Angeles port in favor of moving her to Europe to help with the ever rising demand.  This decision leaves Royal Caribbean without a ship cruising the Mexican Riviera at the moment and needless to say, it's left some folks upset.  Mariner of the Seas replaced Vision of the Seas, which also left it's Mexican Riviera route in favor of Europe.

The problems many have lay in a few categories.  First, there is no option for fans of Royal Caribbean out of Los Angeles.  Those in the western United States are without an option for a nearby ship that serves warm water ports.  Second, many Royal Caribbean fans in the United States are upset over the trend of much of the Royal Caribbean fleet heading to Europe to chase the all mighty Euro and the demand there for cruises. Third, many who have gone on Mariner of the Seas report that the ship is routinely full and that it's not like she was sailing half empty.  All of these concerns have left many with a combination of anger, disgust and frustration.

Royal Caribbean clarified its position on the move in a blog post by Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein when he acknowledged that while Mariner of the Seas was meeting its capacity while in Los Angeles, it was still being moved to Europe because "we are unable to generate acceptable levels of performance for Mariner of the Seas. We are obligated to our shareholders to deploy her where she can earn superior returns".  

For most in the United States, European cruises are interesting options, but ultimately too expensive for most given the high cost of airfare just to get onboard the ship as well as the time off needed for such vacations.  The problem of Mariner of the Seas leaving is compounded by the fact that there is no ship scheduled to replace her yet, and if you do live in a western state, it means you must travel east for warm water cruises, which adds extra cost for travel.  On the one hand, it's hard to blame Royal Caribbean for doing what they're doing.  After all, they are a corporation and their first goal is produce profit for their shareholders (as any publicly traded company does).  On the other hand, the cruise industry is built upon the notion of building customer loyalty and Royal Caribbean has demonstrated a strong will to retain its customers for future cruises.

So what do you think about the decision to move Mariner of the Seas to Europe?  Is Royal Caribbean justified in moving it, and many other ships to Europe to make larger profits?  Or should Royal Caribbean stem the flow of ships east and maintain the fleet it has serving the western hemisphere?

You may have heard of specialty cruises where groups of people go cruising together, but the big trend that the media loves to talk about are "cougar cruises", where older women (over the age of 40 or so called cougars) look for younger men (in their 20's or so) to meet and the idea is women find young men for "companionship" while the young men find a woman who has financial stability, among other things.  This past May, Mariner of the Seas hosted the second cougar cruise but it didn't seem to be a huge success.

"But 20 or so other so-called "cougars" have taken the bait and signed on for what is billed as the second-ever International Cougar Cruise, a week-long Mexican Riviera sailing out of Los Angeles in May. From the get-go, the more vocal among the 25 or so "cubs" along for the ride are grousing about the lack of "Demi-ness" among the cougar contingent. And the more snarly cougars shoot back that there isn't necessarily a lot of Ashton-ness on display, either."

There have been specialty cruises like singles cruises that hope to offer potential soul mates the opportunity to find love while in paradise and there's been some controversy as to the validity of these events.  Personally, I think a lot of hype comes with this sort of news and the reality is it's not the sexy romp that some may lead you to believe.

Obviously we all love a good cruise and there's a great reason to book your next cruise to help support he people of Haiti, who were devasted by that mega earthquake earlier this year.  Given that Royal Caribbean stops in Labadee, it makes sense for fans of Royal Caribbean to get together to help out a great cause.  A group called "Cruise 4 Haiti" is organizing a group cruise where a portion of the cost of the cruise will go straight to some really great charities that are assisting the people of Haiti that were affected by the earthquake.

I know it's only Tuesday, but take a virtual trip to Oasis of the Seas and check out this interesting video tour of Royal Caribbean's newest ship!

Technocrati posted a really interesting article about how social media (Twitter, Facebook, et al) were a great means of generating hype about their latest ship, Oasis of the Seas and how other cruise lines are taking notice now.

Travel trade publication Travel Weekly reported that as of a couple of weeks ago, 10 million unique visitors made their way to OasisoftheSea.com. Additionally, the publications reported that a whopping 200,000 people in a 24-hour period tuned in to watch videos of the Oasis captain, more viewers than Anderson Cooper drew on CNN in the same time period.

I really think Royal Caribbean has been doing a great job with social media, especially on Twitter.  What contributes to their success is the fact they use Twitter not just as a one way means of letting their customers know when a sale or something is going on, but as a communication medium where they actually respond often to those who tweet to them.  In addition, you have the CEO of Royal Caribbean posting on a blog (and it appears to actually be him, not some intern) and it all contributes to making the customer feel like they have a connection to the company.  Bravo RCI!

We're going to start a new series of blog posts that go through the latest blog entries by Royal Caribbean's CEO Adam Goldstein and give an opinion on them, as well as offer you an opportunity to share your thoughts.  Our first entry will deal with the post made on June 6, 2010.

First, the current Ultimate Value Books (a.k.a. coupon books) expire on June 30th and the new ones will arrive before then. In the interim, we’re giving our guests immediate access to the three most significant new or augmented benefits: Internet, laundry and photo. An insert will be placed in the coupon book onboard until the new ones arrive. On most ships the books will arrive in the next two weeks. Legend of the Seas will get her books in late June.

This move is pretty self explanatory and makes sense.  With the recent announcement of changes to Crown and Anchor Society benefits, it's smart of Royal Caribbean to not leave anyone "caught in the middle".

Second, some of our shareholders who are Crown & Anchor members are displeased that the shareholder benefit cannot be used together with Crown & Anchor discounts, including the new onboard booking bonus. We are sorry that this is the case but we cannot modify our approach in this area. In order for the onboard booking bonus to be as robust as possible and to be used together with the Crown & Anchor discounts, we could not allow the shareholder discount to also be used together with it. Please bear in mind that the reason to own our stock is that you believe the stock represents a good investment in connection with your personal investing strategy. The cruise benefit is a nice opportunity to have, if applicable, but not a reason to own the stock.

This was a really surprising response and I found it pretty honest.  He could have just thrown out marketing talk and ignore the issue of Royal Caribbean shareholders complaining about not being able to use their shareholder bonus discount on top of the Crown and Anchor discounts, but instead gave a pretty honest response of you own stock to invest in the company, not get discounts on cruises.  That being said, that isn't going to make those that were complaining happy but, the man has a point!

We have received comments from members who want the benefit of the new onboard booking bonus retroactively applied to previously made bookings. I hope most of you appreciate that we needed to pick a time to introduce this benefit and that there would always be customers who had booked not long before the implementation date. There is no way to draw a line on retroactivity and so the bonus is applicable for eligible bookings made on or after our June 1st announcement.

I think Adam made the fairest choice here by being fair to no one.  I can understand some would be upset if they booked onboard a future cruise a few days before this announcement or a few weeks, but the truth is you got the best deal possible at the time of booking.  If they went back to 2 weeks prior, then everyone who booked 3 or 4 weeks or longer would be up in arms.  There would never be a date range that would make everyone happy unless you went back really, really far and that doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Returning to DreamWorks, we are really excited about this major step forward in our entertainment and programming. DreamWorks is the leader in animated films and Royal Caribbean International is the leader in cruising. Although these companies have worked in very different spaces, they have in common vision, inspiration, creativity, scale and global reach. Not to mention that both companies’ products make people happy.

I posted my thoughts on the merger in an earlier post, but it makes sense that Adam would be playing up this major alliance that Royal Caribbean entered into.  I was reading some comments on the deal around the net, and there are people who say they don't care about characters and don't want their future cruises filled with the characters.  My response to that is simply if you've been on a Disney Cruise, you know that if you never want to see the characters, you won't.  The meets and other character events are held at specific locations and specific times, so it's not like you'll find Shrek roaming the halls looking to give out hugs.

Are you an aspiring chef? Looking to combine your love of cooking with your passion for cruising? Well, Royal Caribbean has the contest for you.  The "Allure of the Seas Culinary Challenge" offers wanna-be chefs the opportunity to become the next Chef de Cuisine of 150 Central Park, the signature restaurant onboard Allure of the Seas, the cruise line's newest ship which will make her debut in December 2010.

If you are a graduate of The Culinary Institute of America with an AOS or BPS degree, then you can enter this contest by creating an original recipe you think could be the next signature dish at 150 Central Park restaurant and create a video of you cooking this dish.  Entries must be received by Sunday, June 20 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

For those of us who can't cook (hello fellow bad cooks!), Royal Caribbean will open the contest up to online voting, which begins on Monday, June 28 at 12:00 a.m. ET and ends on Sunday, July 11 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Consumers can vote once per day for his/her favorite chef.  The top five entries with the highest number of votes, as well as one entry selected by the contest judges, will become finalists and will be invited to participate in a final challenge held at The Culinary Institute of America's Hyde Park campus in New York on August 5 & 6.  The finalists will compete to cook a three-course meal for a panel of judges before a winner is selected to become the next Chef de Cuisine.

Full contest details, deadlines, rules and other important information.  Good luck to anyone who enters!